Dee Finney's blog

start date July 20, 2011

page 651

TOPIC:   THE U.S. CFR

I put this together while listening to one of John B. Wells new radio show which is posted on youtube.com

This is an interview about the CFR by a man who was educated in Cuba.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ls5JJS0BU

http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html

News for CFR

 

Membership Roster

(as of March 09, 2014)

Download the print version of the membership roster as it appears in the 2013 Annual Report.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 

David L. Aaron

C. Spencer Abbot

Steve Abbot

Laura W. Abbot

Kimberly M. Abbott

A. Robert Abboud

Labeeb M. Abboud

Alyce N. Abdalla

Keith W. Abell

Gina K. Abercrombie-Winstanley

Robert John Abernethy

Penny Abeywardena

John P. Abizaid

Mona Aboelnaga Kanaan

Tara B. Abrahams

Max Abrahms

Michael J. Abramowitz

Morton I. Abramowitz

Elliott Abrams

Stacey Y. Abrams

William M. Abrams

David M. Abshire

Niso Abuaf

Odeh F. Aburdene

Nish Acharya

Elliot L. Ackerman

Peter Ackerman

Xanthe Ackerman

Gordon M. Adams

Jacqueline Adams

Marjorie A. Adams

Michael F. Adams

Robert McCormick Adams

Tim Adams

Clara L. Adams-Ender

Beth Addonizio

Carol C. Adelman

David Adelman

Richard C. Adkerson

Allen R. Adler

Stephen J. Adler

Amir Afkhami

Sara R. Agarwal

Sumit Agarwal

Vinnie Aggarwal

Robert F. Agostinelli

Eric Aguiar

David B. Agus

Stephanie Ahern

Salman S. Ahmed

Sanjiv Ahuja

M. Bernard Aidinoff

Negar Akhavi

Alice P. Albright

Madeleine K. Albright

Michael H. Alderman

George H. Aldrich

Aileen K. Alexander

John Alexander

Margo N. Alexander

Rafael Alfonzo

William P. Alford

Paul A. Allaire

Dan Allen

Michael Allen

Jodie T. Allen

John R. Allen

Jonathan Allen

Richard V. Allen

Thad Allen

Faheen Allibhoy

Graham T. Allison

Michael A. Almond

Anne Alonzo

Avery M. Alpha

Jonathan H. Alter

Karen J. Alter

Jon B. Alterman

Daniel Altman

Drew Altman

Roger C. Altman

William C. Altman

David Altshuler

Jose E. Alvarez

Amy E. Alving

Cyrus Amir-Mokri

Rina Amiri

Marvin Ammori

Deborah S. Amos

Manpreet S. Anand

David A. Andelman

Harold W. Andersen

Craig B. Anderson

Desaix Anderson

Edward G. Anderson III

Gloria B. Anderson

Lisa Anderson

Mark A. Anderson

Paul F. Anderson

Wendy R. Anderson

Terry L. Andreas

Brian Andrews

David R. Andrews

Michael A. Andrews

Mark Angelson

M. Michael Ansour

John Duke Anthony

Nancy A. Aossey

David P. Apgar

Mari Carmen Aponte

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Anne E. Applebaum

Francis J. Aquila

Daniel J. Arbess

Cresencio S. Arcos

Anthony Clark Arend

Gideon Argov

Stanley S. Arkin

Michael H. Armacost

Mike Armstrong

Lloyd Armstrong Jr.

Nicole Arnaboldi

Henry H. Arnhold

Adam M. Aron

Melinda Arons

Bernard W. Aronson

Jonathan David Aronson

Gabo Arora

Deana Arsenian

Adrienne Arsht

Robert J. Art

Alberta Arthurs

Carole Artigiani

Ramin Asgard

George E. Assousa

Bama Athreya

Rebecca Atkin

Betsy S. Atkins

Caroline Atkinson

Holly G. Atkinson

J. Brian Atwood

James E. Auer

Paul Auerbach

David D. Aufhauser

Byron Auguste

Norman R. Augustine

Josiah Lee Auspitz

Lloyd J. Austin III

Jesse H. Ausubel

John F. Avedon

John E. Avery

Ronit Avni

Patrick G. Awuah Jr.

Robert M. Axelrod

H. Brandt Ayers

David R. Ayón

Alyssa Ayres

Balan Ayyar

Khalid Azim

Shad Azimi

For more information, please contact Membership at membership@cfr.org or +1.212.434.9456.

 

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. The CFR is considered to be the nation's "most influential foreign-policy think tank". Its membership has included senior politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, and senior media figures.

The CFR regularly convenes meetings at which government officials, global business leaders and prominent members of the intelligence/foreign-policy community discuss major international issues. The council also publishes the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs, and runs a think tank called the David Rockefeller Studies Program, which influences foreign policy by making recommendations to the presidential administration and diplomatic community, testifying before Congress, interacting with the media, and authoring books, reports, articles, and op-eds on foreign policy issues.

The CFR was founded in 1921 and is headquartered in New York City, with an additional office inWashington, D.C..

History

Origins

Elihu Root-1902
Elihu Root, a powerful corporate lawyerwho served as Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and U.S. Senator, headed the first Council on Foreign Relations with a small group of New York financiers and lawyers

“[T]he common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality.”

Former CFR board member Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (1922)

Towards the end of World War I, a working fellowship of about 150 scholars called "The Inquiry" was tasked to brief President Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world when Germany was defeated. Through 1917–1918, this academic band, including Wilson's closest adviser and long-time friend "Colonel"Edward M. House, as well as Walter Lippmann, gathered at the Harold Pratt House in New York City, to assemble the strategy for the postwar world. The team produced more than 2,000 documents detailing and analyzing the political, economic, and social facts globally that would be helpful for Wilson in the peace talks. Their reports formed the basis for the Fourteen Points, which outlined Wilson's strategy for peace after war's end. These scholars then traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and participated in the discussions there.

As a result of discussions they had at the Peace Conference, a small group of British and American diplomats and scholars met on May 30, 1919 at the Hotel Majestic in Paris and decided to create an Anglo-American organization called The Institute of International Affairs, which would have offices in London and New York. However, due to the isolationist views that were prevalent in American society at the time, the scholars had difficulty gaining traction with their plan, and turned their focus instead to a set of discrete meetings that had been taking place since June 1918 in New York City, under the name Council on Foreign Relations. The meetings were headed by the corporate lawyer Elihu Root, who had served as Secretary of State under President Theodore Roosevelt, and attended by 108 “high-ranking officers of banking, manufacturing, trading and finance companies, together with many lawyers.” The members were proponents of Wilson's internationalism, but were particularly concerned about "the effect that the war and the treaty of peace might have on postwar business." The scholars from the inquiry saw an opportunity here to create an organization that brought diplomats, high-level government officials and academics together with lawyers, bankers, and industrialists to engineer government policy. On July 29, 1921 they filed a certification ofincorporation, officially forming the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1922 Edwin F. Gay, former dean of theHarvard Business School and director of the Shipping Board during the war, spearheaded the Council's efforts to begin publication of a magazine that would be the "authoritative" source on foreign policy. He gathered $125,000 from the wealthy members on the council, and via sending letters soliciting funds to "the thousand richest Americans". Using these funds, the first issue of Foreign Affairs was published in September 1922, and within a few years had a gained a reputation as the "most authoritative American review dealing with international relations".

In the late 1930s, the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation began contributing large amounts of money to the Council. In 1938 they created various Committees on Foreign Relations[ throughout the country, funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Influential men were to be chosen in a number of cities, and would then be brought together for discussions in their own communities as well as participating in an annual conference in New York. These local committees served to influence local leaders and shape public opinion to build support for the Council's policies, while also acting as "useful listening posts" through which the Council and U.S. government could "sense the mood of the country".

Beginning in 1939 and lasting for five years, the Council achieved much greater prominence within the government and the State Department when it established the strictly confidential War and Peace Studies, funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation. The secrecy surrounding this group was such that the Council members who were not involved in its deliberations were completely unaware of the study group's existence. It was divided into four functional topic groups: economic and financial, security and armaments, territorial, and political. The security and armaments group was headed by Allen Welsh Dulles who later became a pivotal figure in the CIA's predecessor, the OSS. It ultimately produced 682 memoranda for the State Department, marked classified and circulated among the appropriate government departments.

Cold War era

A critical study found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council. During the Eisenhower administration 40% of the top U.S. foreign policy officials were Council members (Eisenhower himself had been a council member); under Truman 42% of the top posts were filled by council members. During the Kennedy administration, this number rose to 51%, and finally peaked at 57% under the Johnson administration.

In an anonymous piece called "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1947, CFR study group member George Kennancoined the term "containment." The essay would prove to be highly influential in US foreign policy for seven upcoming presidential administrations. 40 years later, Kennan explained that he had never suspected the Russians of any desire to launch an attack on America; he thought that was obvious enough he didn't need to explain it in his essay. William Bundy credited the CFR's study groups with helping to lay the framework of thinking that led to the Marshall Plan and NATO. Due to new interest in the group, membership grew towards 1,000.

Dwight D. Eisenhower chaired a CFR study group while he served as President of Columbia University. One member later said, "whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics, he has learned at the study group meetings."[15] The CFR study group devised an expanded study group called "Americans for Eisenhower" to increase his chances for the presidency. Eisenhower would later draw many Cabinet members from CFR ranks and become a CFR member himself. His primary CFR appointment was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles gave a public address at the Harold Pratt House in which he announced a new direction for Eisenhower's foreign policy: "There is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power." After this speech, the council convened a session on "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" and chose Henry Kissinger to head it. Kissinger spent the following academic year working on the project at Council headquarters. The book of the same name that he published from his research in 1957 gave him national recognition, topping the national bestseller lists.

On November 24, 1953, a study group heard a report from political scientist William Henderson regarding the ongoing conflict between France and Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces, a struggle that would later become known as the First Indochina War. Henderson argued that Ho's cause was primarily nationalist in nature and that Marxism had "little to do with the current revolution." Further, the report said, the United States could work with Ho to guide his movement away from Communism. State Department officials, however, expressed skepticism about direct American intervention in Vietnam and the idea was tabled. Over the next twenty years, the United States would find itself allied with anti-Communist South Vietnam and against Ho and his supporters in the Vietnam War.

The Council served as a "breeding ground" for important American policies such as mutual deterrence, arms control, and nuclear non-proliferation.

In 1962 the group began a program of bringing select Air Force officers to the Harold Pratt House to study alongside its scholars. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps requested they start similar programs for their own officers.

A four-year long study of relations between America and China was conducted by the Council between 1964 and 1968. One study published in 1966 concluded that American citizens were more open to talks with China than their elected leaders. Kissinger had continued to publish in Foreign Affairsand was appointed by President Nixon to serve as National Security Adviser in 1969. In 1971, he embarked on a secret trip to Beijing to broach talks with Chinese leaders. Nixon went to China in 1972, and diplomatic relations were completely normalized by President Carter's Secretary of State, another Council member, Cyrus Vance.

Vietnam created a rift within the organization. When Hamilton Fish Armstrong announced in 1970 that he would be leaving the helm of Foreign Affairsafter 45 years, new chairman David Rockefeller approached a family friend, William Bundy, to take over the position. Anti-war advocates within the Council rose in protest against this appointment, claiming that Bundy's hawkish record in the State and Defense Departments and the CIA precluded him from taking over an independent journal. Some considered Bundy a war criminal for his prior actions.

In November 1979, while chairman of the CFR, David Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the State Department to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the US for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life. In his book White House Diary, Carter wrote of the affair, "April 9 [1979] David Rockefeller came in, apparently to induce me to let the shah come to the United States. Rockefeller, Kissinger, and Brzezinski seem to be adopting this as a joint project..."

Current status

Mission

As stated on its website, the CFR's mission is to be "a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators andstudents, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries". The CFR promotes globalization, free trade, reducing financial regulations on transnational corporations, and economic consolidation into regional blocs such as NAFTA or the European Union, and develops policy recommendations that reflect these goals.

It convenes meetings at which government officials, global leaders and prominent members of the foreign policy community discuss major international issues. Its think tank, the David Rockefeller Studies Program, is composed of about fifty adjunct and full-time scholars, as well as ten in-residence recipients of year-long fellowships, who cover the major regions and significant issues shaping today's international agenda. These scholars contribute to the foreign policy debate by making recommendations to the presidential administration, testifying before Congress, serving as a resource to the diplomatic community, interacting with the media, authoring books, reports, articles, and op-eds on foreign policy issues.

Membership

CFR INTERLOCKS - 2004

Network diagram showing interlocks between various U.S. corporations and institutions and the Council on Foreign Relations, in 2004

There are two types of membership: life, and term membership, which lasts for 5 years and is available to those between 30 and 36. Only U.S. citizens (native born or naturalized) and permanent residents who have applied for U.S. citizenship are eligible. A candidate for life membership must be nominated in writing by one Council member and seconded by a minimum of three others. Visiting fellows are prohibited from applying for membership until they have completed their fellowship tenure.

Corporate membership (250 in total) is divided into "Associates", "Affiliates" ($30,000+), "President's Circle" ($60,000+) and "Founders" (100,000+). All corporate executive members have opportunities to hear distinguished speakers, such as overseas presidents and prime ministers, chairmen and CEOs of multinational corporations, and U.S. officials and Congressmen. President and premium members are also entitled to other benefits, including attendance at small, private dinners or receptions with senior American officials and world leaders.[24]

Current board members

ROBERT RUBIN

Council chairman Robert Rubin was the former U.S. Secretary of Treasury (1995-99). Rubin formerly spent decades as a high-level executive at Goldman Sachs, as well as serving on the board of Citigroup. He was the first director of the National Economic Council, and served as PresidentBill Clinton's assistant on economic policy.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL

Council board member Colin Powell is a former four-star General in the United States Army and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor for Ronald Reagan (1987–1989), U.S. Secretary of State (2001-2005).

THOMAS GLOCER
Council board member Tom Glocer is the former CEO of international news agencyReuters. Glocer also serves on the board ofMerck & Co., Inc., Morgan Stanley, and K2 Intelligence, and is a member of theBusiness Council and the Atlantic CouncilInternational advisory board.
JAMES OWEN - BARACK OBAMA

Council board member James W. Owens is chairman and CEO Emeritus of Caterpillar Inc.. Owens is also a director of Alcoa Inc.,IBM Corporation, and Morgan Stanley. He was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board from 2009-2010, and is currently a member of the board of trustees of North Carolina State University. Pictured here is Owens meeting with U.S. president Barack Obama in theWhite House

Policy initiatives

GEORGE W BUSH 2005



President George W. Bush addresses a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., speaking about the War on Terror and the rebuilding of Iraq after theIraq War (December 7, 2005)

The CFR started a program in 2008 to last for 5 years and funded by a grant from the Robina Foundation called "International Institutions and Global Governance" which aims to identify the institutional requirements for effective multilateral cooperation in the 21st century.

The CFR's Maurice C. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, directed by scholar and authorSebastian Mallaby, works to promote a better understanding among policymakers, academic specialists, and the interested public of how economic and political forces interact to influence world affairs.

The CFR's Center for Preventive Action (CPA) seeks to help prevent, defuse, or resolve deadly conflicts around the world and to expand the body of knowledge on conflict prevention. It does so by creating a forum in which representatives of governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and civil society can gather to develop operational and timely strategies for promoting peace in specific conflict situations.

Foreign Affairs

The council publishes Foreign Affairs, "the preeminent journal of international affairs and U.S. foreign policy". It also establishes independent task forces, which bring together experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise to work together to produce reports offering both findings and policy prescriptions on important foreign policy topics. The CFR has sponsored more than fifty reports, e.g. the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America that published report No, 53, titled Building a North American Community, in May 2005.

References

  1. Jump up^ Lobe, Jim (August 19, 2005). "Realists Rule?". Inter Press Service. "The nation's most influential foreign-policy think tank"
  2. Jump up^ Shoup & Minter, 1977: pp. 13-14
  3. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: pp. 1-5
  4. Jump up^ Shoup & Minter, 1977: p. 12
  5. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: p. 5
  6. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: p. 7
  7. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: pp. 8-9
  8. Jump up^ Shoup & Minter, 1977: pp. 17-18
  9. Jump up^ O'Brien, Thomas F. (1999). The Century of U.S. Capitalism in Latin America. UNM Press. pp. 105–106. ISBN 9780826319968.
  10. Jump up^ These later became governed by the American Committees on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C..
  11. Jump up^ Shoup & Minter, 1977: pp. 30-31
  12. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Continuing the Inquiry: War and Peace"
  13. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: p. 48
  14. Jump up^ Shoup & Minter, 1977: pp. 62-64
  15. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f "Continuing the Inquiry: “X” Leads the Way"
  16. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: p. 46
  17. Jump up^ Grose, 2006: p. 50-51
  18. Jump up^ Rothbard, Murray, Why the War? The Kuwait Connection (May 1991)
  19. Jump up^ Scrutiny by NYT over the Shah of Iran – David Rockefeller, Memoirs(pp. 356–75)
  20. Jump up^ Avilés, William (2007). Global Capitalism, Democracy, and Civil-Military Relations in Colombia. SUNY Press. p. 13.ISBN 9780791467008.
  21. Jump up^ Robinson, William I. (2004). A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World. JHU Press. p. 126. ISBN 9780801879272.
  22. Jump up^ Barrow, Clyde W. (1993). Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neomarxist, Postmarxist. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 33.ISBN 9780299137137.
  23. Jump up^ "Membership".
  24. Jump up^ "Corporate Program" PDF (330 KB)
  25. Jump up^ "International Institutions and Global Governance". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
  26. Jump up^ "Maurice C. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
  27. Jump up^ "President's Welcome". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2007-02-24.

Bibliography

Books

Articles

External links

 

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